this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
1493 points (98.8% liked)

Comic Strips

12266 readers
2681 users here now

Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

The rules are simple:

Web of links

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 34 points 14 hours ago (6 children)

I often wonder how news websites are supposed to survive. People (myself included) want unbiased news websites without paywalls and ads.

How are they supposed to pay their staff?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

News sites are in need of a paradigm shift.

I think we might get to a system where summaries of news are free, but indepth articles and videos are paid.

Oh and I believe that news sites should scrap subscription only models, I should be able to pay 1-2EUR for a single article that I want to read, with no risk of the payment being a subscription.

Obviously subscriptions models should still be an alternative if the users want it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 hours ago

I'd happily pay a nominal fee for news that was unbiased reporting of facts rather than opinion, and didn't bombard me with ads or sell my data. It just doesn't exist so I use aggregators to get a general vibe across sources.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

If your website is a business, you need to have a business model. If your business model isn't sustainable, because it relies on not annoying visitors too much, maybe look for a better one.

Btw, most newspages have adapted some 10 years ago already, showing the important news for free and additional details with paid account. A lot have the balance off tho.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 12 hours ago

I'm fine with ads when they don't take up half my screen or try and shift the page to to trick me into clicking on them, should a stuck with sidebar adds.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 hours ago

The best business model is one that allows users to pay what they want. Unfortunately that means most of these sites would go out of business, which is not what they want so they'll keep forcing more and more invasive ads on people until the dam truly breaks.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Subscription models. Some sites even combine some free articles with it, so that anyone can look into their works, but not necessarily everything. If it fits you, you get a subscription. Sort of the same way people would pay for their daily newspaper.

It can be argued that "news" should be free, and there are some news site that are basically picking up AP/AFP/whatever and repost these, but actual journalism do requires work.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago

That’s what they do, then users cry about paywalls

It’s lose/lose

[–] [email protected] 11 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

The honest answer are general fees like they are used for public broadcasters. It’s not a perfect system either and it requires significant effort to keep things neutral, but overall it seems to have the best results if you compare the quality of the outcome.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

Who gets to collect revenue from the fees though? Where do you draw the line, are you cutting off independent journalism?